F2F with Cab Secs (Session 2)

Arsenio Balisacan,
Secretary at National Economic and Development Authority

Dr. Arsenio Balisacan is an economist with extensive development policy, governance, and administration expertise acquired from over 35 years of professional work as a government official, non-governmental organization executive, economic adviser, researcher, professor, and consultant to various international development institutions. A former economics professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) for three decades, Dr. Balisacan is presently a Cabinet member of the Philippine Government, serving as Secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority, a post he had previously held from 2012 to 2016. He also served as the inaugural Chairperson and Chief Executive of the Philippine Competition Commission from 2016 to 2022. Previous to his initial Cabinet appointment in 2012, he was Dean of the UP School of Economics, Director-Chief Executive of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), and Undersecretary for Policy and Planning of the Department of Agriculture. Before joining the UP faculty in 1987, he was a research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and an economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He has served in various capacities in many academic and professional organizations, including as president of the Philippine Economic Society, president of the Asian Society of Agricultural Economists, secretary-general of the Asia Pacific Agricultural Policy Forum, and Advisory Council member of the American Committee on Asian Economic Studies. He has authored and co-edited seven books and published, both locally and internationally, close to 100 academic papers and book chapters on various development issues, particularly in the Philippines and East Asia. His papers have appeared in, among others, Economics Letters (Elsevier), World Development (Elsevier), Review of World Economics (Springer), and Economic Development and Cultural Change (University of Chicago). A member (academician) for life of the National Academy of Science and Technology since 2008, he holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Hawaii, an MS in Agricultural Economics from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and a BS in Agriculture (Magna Cum Laude) from the Mariano Marcos State University.